Bob Lowe, 87, of Bridgewater recounts how Michelin came to town

Lowe was on fledgling industrial commission that helped bring tire giant to town in 1971

Bob Lowe, 87, is the last surviving member of a group of five men who were instrumental in bringing Michelin to Bridgewater nearly 43 years ago. The former radio station owner was presented with a bronzed microphone when he sold CKBW and retired in 1989. (BEVERLEY WARE / South Shore Bureau)

Bob Lowe has never set foot inside the Michelin plant in Bridgewater.

That’s a little surprising because the 87-year-old is the last surviving member of a committee of five that was instrumental in attracting the tire giant to the small South Shore town.

“I wouldn’t want to know where Bridgewater would be today without Michelin,” said Lowe, though he was the target of many an upset businessman and housewife when word got out in late 1969 that Michelin was coming to Bridgewater.

Several businessmen said the tiremaker would drive them into the ground because they couldn’t compete with such wages. Others were concerned a pall of black smoke would hang over the town, destroying its beauty as well as the health of its residents.

One woman called Lowe in tears saying she’d never be able to hang her wash on the line again.

But Bridgewater has grown from a population of about 3,500 when Michelin first opened in 1971 to more than 8,000 today, and local businesses have grown, too, providing goods and services to the increased population.

In 2007, 34 years after it opened its doors, the plant produced its 100 millionth tire. Today, it employs about 1,200, and Lowe said they’re paid well and have solid benefits and pensions.

Lowe is the last surviving member of the initial Bridgewater Industrial Commission that worked “secretly” to bring Michelin to Bridgewater.

He has decided to put his story down on paper with help from his wife Greta and publish it “for public record.”

Helping to bring Michelin to Bridgewater isn’t the former radio station sales manager and owner’s only contribution to the community.

In 1990, he received the provincial Volunteer of the Year Award. Over the years he has volunteered for such organizations as the VON, IWK Health Centre, Bridgewater’s Junior Chamber of Commerce, Bridgewater Board of Trade and Chamber of Commerce, South Shore Tourist Association and Bridgewater’s Brookside Cemetery Commission.

As a member of the I.O.O.F. LaHave Lodge, which closed in 2008, he ensured proceeds of the sale of the property went to the local cemetery and a series of local charities, including Senior Wheels, the fire department and Red Cross.

Lowe helped build Bridgewater United Church and three years ago he and his wife paid for its new roof. He’s also the man who proposed using abandoned rail lines in Nova Scotia as shared use recreational trails.

Lowe’s interest in community began early in life when, at 19, he spearheaded efforts to build a hall in his home community of Branch LaHave, just outside Bridgewater.

He secured a donation of land on the condition the foundation be laid first. Lowe knocked on doors, got donations of logs and found men to cut and haul them to a nearby mill, where he secured a deal to have them sawed for half price. He was one of three men to design the building and he wired it for free.

Lowe ended up as sales manager, and eventually an owner, at CKBW, Bridgewater’s radio station, where he worked for 25 years.

And that’s how he got involved with the effort to bring Michelin to town.

In 1969, a Goodyear dealer told Lowe’s friend Walter Logan, the local General Motors dealer, that he had heard Michelin was planning to establish a tire plant in Canada rather than the United States.

Logan and friends John Hirtle and Sally Nafthal had formed a fledgling industrial commission to attract new businesses. They brought Lowe and station manager Jamie MacLeod onto the committee and decided to write to the tire giant to say Bridgewater would welcome the company.

They figured the letter should be in French, so they picked up Logan’s bilingual daughter from Dalhousie University and brought her into the radio station where they used a manual Remington typewriter and CKBW letterhead to write to Michelin.

“We had it all written and then we thought, ‘Who are we going to send it to?’” Lowe recalled.

Hirtle was a close friend of the owner of a radio station in Newfoundland who had just been elected to parliament and named the federal minister of trade and commerce. They gave him a call and he got them a name and address.

They popped the letter in the mail with a six cent stamp. “And that’s how it started,” Lowe said.

Within two weeks, a representative of Michelin called asking if one of them could pick him up at the Halifax airport so that he could check out Bridgewater.

They met in the private dining area of the former Peter Boy Restaurant, which was the first of several quietly arranged meetings in which CKBW picked up the tab, Lowe said.

The representative came with a list of requests seeking information on available land, electrical capacity, water service, training facilities, the workforce and transportation.

“It was just unbelievable how quickly we put things together,” Lowe said. “We knew what we wanted to do and we weren’t hamstrung by any government official. We did it all ourselves.”

Once the committee secured credit of $250,000 through the Bank of Montreal and details for supplying water lines, an electrical supply, access roads and adequate land, it was time to go to town council and the province.

“We were the catalyst that put it in place,” but they needed the support of the town and the province to make things happen.

Needless to say, they got it, and the plant opened on 30 hectares of land in Bridgewater’s new industrial park on Oct. 15, 1971.

In case you’re wondering, Lowe never drives a car without Michelins.

He bought a new Honda not long ago. Before he took possession, he insisted they “take those damn rags off and put Michelins on.” It cost him an extra $85 and he was happy to pay the difference.